TRPG General Chat

12:00 AM

Just ask a question about what "yes, and" is and how/why it works.

You're not struggling with when to use it, but with the fundamental nature of the attitude it describes.

"Yes" means you accept that your partner's contribution is true and valid and you will not obstruct it. "And" means you build on your partner's contribution by adding more information to the narrative.

Shalvenay

@BESW I think most of my problem is that I actually consider non-working actions to be "true and valid" -- i.e. negative results are useful as they prune the decision-tree

BESW

That, or you're applying the "yes, and" rule of thumb as a universal law.

Again, just ask the Stack to explain the rule to you--what it is, why it's cool, how it works.

Shalvenay

@BESW I think an explanation is insufficient here -- I'm struggling with the attitude it describes because I'm drawing illogical results from it

furthermore -- there's another facet to this, and that's sometimes I'll acknowledge what they did as valid at that point in time, but proceed to do something that invalidates/radically alters the narrative at hand

"You go to pickpocket so-and-so" "Your hand reaches in, but suddenly you get sucked through the purse's entrance into an alternate dimension with no exit in sight!"

BESW

12:20 AM

I think you're looking to "yes, and" as a broader tool than it actually is.

Shalvenay

@BESW or conversely, that my concept of "no" in a narrative sense is far narrower than the norm?

BESW

Well, there's also the fact that none of the examples you've given have been in the form of a conversation between two improvisation participants.

If both participants are using the second person, then they're neither of them describing the actions of their own character.

trogdor

I think this might also go back to just how much more equal the distribution of decisions about what is supposed to be happening in Fate is, compared to many other RPGs

BESW

@trogdor Yeah, but this isn't about Fate. "Yes, and" is a tool many RPGs recommend.

trogdor

ah

Shalvenay

12:22 AM

@BESW I think the way I've been writing the premise point is as a "readback" if you will

trogdor

it seemed like it

BESW

Also, "yes, and" is not a single, alone rule.

It's part of a larger set of rules or norms which always include "Don't deny" or "Don't block."

You also have to pay close attention to the difference between "I try to do [thing]" (which invites complications to the attempt) and "I do [thing]" (which invites complications to the aftermath).

And that kind of phrasing is something everyone needs to be aware of and controlling.

These tools don't work if you're the only one using them.

trogdor

yes, this is true

Shalvenay

@BESW yeah, the former is by far and wide the norm in the environments I deal with -- not phrasing things as "I try to do ..." when that action has consequences on other players is seen as godmodish in some of the environments I've been in, even

BESW

You may find rules of improv useful.

trogdor

12:33 AM

anyway, regardless of system, turning a pickpocket attempt into a magical dimensional trap seems like an excessive escalation of the circumstances. I get it if your group expects/wants such escalations, but if they don't that in itself might be an issue

BESW

Mmm. Notice that the rules of improv tend to mention things like supporting rather than upstaging, only using ridiculous escalation in comedy where nothing else is working, and agreeing on the set-up and basic situation.

trogdor

those are some pretty nice baseline rules there

Baskakov_Dmitriy

I read a bunch of archived game-recommendation questions. Most are bad, but some were actually good. And I think I found out what makes a good game rec question (probably others already got that too, but what if?). Good questions, such as that one (rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/57698/…) all mentioned a very specific goal to be achieved.

The list of RPGs that could help was actually very short, and, for example, while reading the question I had the same answer in my head as the top-voted answer, which probably means something.

Most other questions, however, like that one (rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/19488/…), are "I want to roleplay something like this, which system is good for such a thing?", which is doomed to be too broad and too subjective. Maybe it's time for game rec to return, with revisited criteria?

BESW

Mmm. The problem was that enough answerers refused to follow basic policy about avoiding untested speculation in game-rec answers, it was more effort than it was worth to enforce the site's standards for answers.

For some reason game-rec questions made a lot of users think they could just say "I think [game] will work" without any support.

You can find the discussions in game-recommendation.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

Oh, I read it all already!

Maybe rules just needed to be a bit more specific?

Or there should be a reminder like "Don't forget about the "Back it up!" policy!" if answering a game rec question?

BESW

12:45 AM

We tried all of that.

The tag I linked to above is the meta tag.

Which includes things like the time we added a banner to every game-rec question:

7

A: Permanent banner for game-recommendation tag

Done, tweaked as follows: As this is a game-recommendation question, please adhere to the FAQ, the rules for subjective questions as outlined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective and our rules for game recommendations. All responses must cite actual experience or reference others' experiences!

Miniman

Yeah, the mods really tried to make recs work here.

BESW

And the time people were re-opening overly broad game-rec questions.

We spent, what, four or five years? trying different ways to make it work.

Miniman

I wasn't around for that long.

But in the time I've been on the site, recs have gotten a lot of focus - and haven't really worked out well, in general, anyway.

BESW

Let's see, our first game rec question was asked in August 2010, and game recs became officially off-topic in August 2015.

trogdor

@Miniman ditto for both of those things

BESW

12:57 AM

@Baskakov_Dmitriy It boiled down to the fact that even specific comments on individual answers reminding people of the site-wide GS/BS policy were met with active belligerent resistance from a large number of people who felt their unsupported speculation was acceptable in the game-rec context.

After five years of trying to legislate, explain, shift community sentiment, and even not enforce policy on those answers, it was very clear that game-recs caused rifts in the site's community and drastically reduced the quality of the site's content (not just in game-recs, but elsewhere because game-recs were taking up so much of the site's time and energy).

trogdor

yeah, I have never wanted to be a mod on any site, way too much work, and that is just from me looking over the shoulders of a couple people who have modded sites XD

BESW

Yeah, and it was occupying a lot of the high-rep users' time too.

Without users performing simple crowd-sourced mod duties across the site, the mods can't deal with the actual fires.

Miniman

Actually, that was a big problem with game-recs; it wasn't possible to crowdsource curation, because high-rep users couldn't do most of the actions gamerec policy required.

trogdor

yeah, I would hate for this site to burn down because no one could deal with one extremely problematic tag

that would be a huge disappointment

Miniman

Wait, trogdor doesn't want things to burn down? suspicious stare

Adeptus

1:09 AM

It's disappointing that we can't have ~~nice things~~ game recs, but I understand why

BESW

@Miniman He just doesn't want things to burn down if he's not actively involved.

Miniman

@BESW Well, @trogdor, if you ever decide that the time has come, just ask a question and tag it with game-recommendation, system-agnostic, and rules-as-written.

4

The explosion should be visible from space.

4

BESW

You've got two more slots to fill: [alignment] and [monk] should do nicely.

Miniman

shudder

trogdor

lol

Adeptus

1:12 AM

Wow. You two are evil masterminds.

trogdor

look, even dragons don't burn down places they like to visit

I thought this was a concept that could be intuitively understood, but I guess not? :P

Miniman

"I'm looking for a system with strict alignment rules for monks that I can apply to any game I play in regardless of system."

6

@trogdor I always thought burning a place down was how dragons visit!

trogdor

@Miniman that is how we express displeasure

BESW

Then you've never been to a place a dragon liked.

trogdor

it just turns out that a lot of peasants, and knights, and kings, happen to be extremely rude

and don't get me started on the murderhobos

doppelgreener

1:16 AM

@Miniman @BESW You could actually exactly fit the five tag limit by asking a system-agnostic game-recommendation rules-as-written monk alignment question.

BESW

@doppelgreener That's what I meant by "two more slots."

trogdor

@doppelgreener hehehe

doppelgreener

@BESW aha! aha, i see now.

trogdor

@Miniman you should read Dragons of the Cuyahoga Cleveland Ohio didn't get burned down, presumably because the dragons there found it an acceptable place.

Miniman

Does that mean that dragons automatically like places that are fireproof?

trogdor

1:20 AM

@Miniman no, we have alternate ways of wrecking those places if we so choose

but if a place is fireproof, that at least shows a little more effort on the part of the people who live there

the people who built a place to be fireproof also probably put more effort into making it look nice, and or have a practical function of some kind

so there is still a possible correlation

possibly even a causation XD

Shalvenay

I wonder what'd happen if a dragon had a run-in with one of those infamous banes of the low flying called power lines...

trogdor

you have conjectured this before, as I recall

nitsua60

@BESW feel like a sui generis [vow-of-poverty] tag would fit in there, too. Shame there's only 5 slots.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 SPEAK NOT OF IT

nitsua60

1:35 AM

@Shalvenay re: "yes, and" it seems to me (from the outside) like you have trouble wiping the slate clean and really starting fresh. Such that when another says something it is neither fitting nor jarring, it is simply a new truth you've collectively established about the shared world.

Alright, hatmas... 62 copyedits, 173 helpful flags, 78 rep-caps, 149 spells answers, or 445 edit-and-answers.... I'm feeling the gold this year.

Hmm. I suppose time's a little tight to rep-cap 78 times before January....

@doppelgreener NEVERTHELESS!

trogdor

lol

Shalvenay

1:50 AM

@nitsua60 yeah -- part of it is me basically having trouble turning off my nonsense-filter

nitsua60

Might need to meditate. Clear your mind, and all =)

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 that's pretty much mission-impossible :P

trogdor

2:12 AM

@nitsua60 @Shalvenay meditation doesn't have to include the "clearing of the mind" taking a moment of silence to focus on your own breathing works towards meditation

Shalvenay

@trogdor my mind pretty much is stuck on random play

trogdor

I have done it myself on occasion, it is a useful tool for focusing and calming myself

@Shalvenay inwardly sure, but if you have time in which no other person is bothering you, and you actually feel like trying it, you could be surprised

that being said, I am not trying to say it is for everyone

just that meditation in and of itself really isn't something that you have to structure

nitsua60

Okay, true confessions time: I grab a quick five-second meditative break in the space between closing the car door on the last kid and walking to the driver's door.

Every time.

trogdor

hehehe

parent meditation

very nice

nitsua60

I figure: with all the ferrying-around I've taken a few extra weeks' vacation, 5 sec. at a time, since my first was born.

BESW

3:09 AM

This morning's task has been convincing Windows 10 to stop doing things I don't like.

This afternoon's task will probably be breathing into a paper bag.

trogdor

ah windows 10, the operating system optimized, through years of prievious operating systems, to do random &*$*% you didn't tell it to

and it comes pre packaged into new PC's

"thumbs up sarcastically"

mine cut off my internet access because I had a pre installed virus protection software that wanted me to buy it, so I had to find the thing and rip it out

lord knows why it had any control over my firewall when I didn't give it any permissions

nitsua60

5:49 AM

Hmm... 24-body spring-mass system in seven spatial dimensions (yes, that's 336 simultaneous ODE1s to solve) takes a while to equilibrate... C'mon, MATLAB, I'm not paying you for nothing. (Come to think of it, I'm not paying you at all!)

Baskakov_Dmitriy

9:14 AM

What if game-recommendations get premoderated? So they don't appear on web-site untill a moderator (or a high-rep member) approves them in a special queue?

BESW

9:25 AM

The whole point of the thing is that the effort/reward ratio on them was sadly unfavorable. Even if it were possible to change the site's mechanics to allow that kind of a pre-posting queue (it'd need a top-down code change from the Stack network devs, it's not something that could be implemented by or for a single Stack site), it'd just be front-loading that extra effort.

44

Q: Why are "shopping list" questions bad?

My question was closed for being a "shopping list question", even though it was absolutely on topic and programming related. Why?

This isn't an RPG-specific thing. RPG.SE is one of the only newer Stacks which even tried to accommodate shopping questions; most of the network had already given up on them.

It's just not something which the Stack structure/community can handle without more curation effort and community conflict than the positive additions to the site's content are worth.

The way to make game-recs work for the site is, quite simply, to get enough people to buy into "support your suggestions with someone's experience doing the thing or something very like the thing" that they won't suck out a disproportionate amount of RPG.SE's limited curation resources and good will.

Imagine if questions about New World of Darkness mechanics got answers about D&D 5e mechanics, and people argued about whether that was okay or not. The solution would not be to vet all nWoD answers--that's addressing the symptom, not the cause, and creating MORE work and discontent rather than less.

Magician

9:41 AM

I'm not sure that's the correct similie. The issue with our particular site, the way I see it, is that the variety of games people can come up with is pretty much limitless. So chances of someone else having played a very similar game, to be able to back up their recommendation, are pretty slim.

BESW

Eh, I'd say it's pretty accurate. If you aren't an nWoD expert you shouldn't feel the need to answer nWoD questions.

Similes are, by their nature, not exact matches, but I think it works okay for my point here.

Magician

Yeah, but game rec questions typically sound like "I want a game about space vikings", which no one on the site has played, but which sounds similar to maybe the WH40K line, or maybe some version of Fate, or Starjammer could be hacked...

BESW

Aye.

The point is about understanding the site's functionality and exercising self-control to post within its guidelines.

Magician

So it's not that people are wilfully barging into the question with obviously incorrect suggestions. It's that all suggestions are kind of ok, maybe, but not as Answers.

BESW

I think we're splitting hairs. I'm talking very generally about folks giving answers which aren't supported according to the Stack guidelines associated with the kind of question being asked.

I think you're saying I'm comparing one kind of guideline with another.

Magician

9:47 AM

I guess so. Gotta run, sorry. Carry on :)

BESW

Both cases are "Hey, that's not the right kind of answer for this question," and extra curation isn't going to stop it from happening.

Extra curation is just extra work to clean up after the problem instead of trying to fix the problem.

Fixing the problem involves education, which we did with all the tools available to the site mods: tag metas, question banners, customised comments...

And eventually it was determined to be a vampire problem that wouldn't respond enough to the tools are our disposal to make continuing effort worthwhile.

(BTW, we do occasionally get folks giving D&D answers to non-D&D questions because they assume all RPGs are D&D. Or folks thinking one D&D edition's mechanics are sufficiently similar to another's to let them answer the question, because they're familiar with non-D&D systems whose editions are nearly identical. It's just not common enough to be a curation sink.)

@Miniman Here's some queries for you: How many game-recommendation questions have at least one non-spam deleted answer, and how many non-spam deleted answers are there total in the game-recommendation tag?

Miniman

11:00 AM

@BESW There are 147 game-rec questions with at least one deleted answer, no way to tell if it was spam or not.

311 deleted answers total in the game-rec tag.

Probably.

BESW

I'm assuming that doesn't include deleted game-rec questions.

Miniman

@BESW Correct.

BESW

So 33% of surviving game-rec questions got at least one deleted answer.

Miniman

Yes. Probably.

eimyr

@Miniman Fancy RPG.SE database query challenge?

Miniman

11:05 AM

@eimyr Always!

I mean, it can't be harder than querying deleted stuff.

BESW

Or to put it another way, for every 1.5 game-rec questions asked, a game-rec answer was bad enough to delete.

eimyr

@Miniman For each RPG.SE user with at least one answer compute ratio of @ mentions to answers given.

Miniman

@eimyr @'s in comments, answers/questions, or both?

eimyr

@Miniman All mentions except on chat

Miniman

@eimyr Wow, that is a challenge. Give me a few minutes.

(Or forever, depending whether SEDE allows subquerying.)

eimyr

11:10 AM

@Miniman well, making it simple takes away the fun

Miniman

@eimyr Timed out just looking for mentions in posts - you need to cut the list of users down.

eimyr

Above 10k then

Miniman

Still too long - I've cut it down to searching for a specific user.

data.stackexchange.com/rpg/query/596217

It could be prettier, but that's more effort than it's worth.

For my own curiosity I tried to do a top 10 most mentioned users, but it has to do it for everyone to work that out, so that's useless.

eimyr

11:27 AM

Right.

Shame.

I wanted to see who is the most talked about in relation to their answer quantity

Miniman

Unfotunately the timeout is only 120 seconds, and that's not just the query execution limit on the server, either.

@eimyr There's an easier way to do that with similar results, though.

@eimyr data.stackexchange.com/rpg/query/596263/…

eimyr

but that's their comments, right?

or comments @them ?

Miniman

Neither - it's comments on their stuff.

So there are 3445 comments on KRyan's questions and answers.

BESW

Interesting... because I semi-regularly prune my comments and flag comments in threads I participate in.

Miniman

Time to ratiofy it!

Ok, I'm happier with this version: data.stackexchange.com/rpg/query/596263/…

So we can see, for example, that mxy posts a lot, but has a pretty low number of comments per post, presumably because he cleans them up.

And...oh dear. I have an abnormally high ratio of comments per post.

eimyr

11:39 AM

can you include deleted post count?

Miniman

Nope.

We can do some querying on deleted posts, but nothing that links them to users or identifys them in any way.

BESW

And deleted comments are mod-only territory.

Miniman

@BESW Well, sort of. SEDE includes a CommentCount field on the post, so it's still possible to count comments on deleted posts (as opposed to deleted comments).

eimyr

huh, so at 1.73 comments per post I'm about as commented as SSD, which only means SSD cleans his comments to match my ratio, which is flattering even if not intentional

BESW

I'm the proud owner of a ratio under 1!

doppelgreener

12:24 PM

*throws a bunch of ninja stars at a samurai and he deflects them all with his sword* Really? Alright hold on I have to pick these up

Tweeted by iscoff on December 9, 2016 at 6:17 PM

doppelgreener

1:08 PM

@Miniman is this [comments I have made] : [posts I have made], or [comments by anyone on posts I have made] : [posts I have made]?

BESW

@doppelgreener The latter, I think.

Really, I think it measures how well we've been incorporating comments into our posts and flagging them for deletion, and/or how many comment wars our posts have sparked.

nitsua60

@BESW Wow. By my count there're only about a thousand users in that tranche.

(And one of them's Community, and that guy games the system.)

BESW

[learns a new word]

nitsua60

It's an exalamatory, usually positive in feeling.

Often confused with the first of the really popular MMORPGs.

BESW

[learns a new typo]

nitsua60

1:13 PM

=)

@Miniman 1.48 here. Can't wrap my my head around what that means. (Either there are too many confounding variables or I only got 4 hours' sleep last night. Or both.)

BESW

@nitsua60 It means people have a lot to say about your posts.

nitsua60

@BESW More than you might think, as I'm pretty mindful about browsing my old answers and either incorporating or not, then flagging.

doppelgreener

1:58 PM

Today in "spells I understand less the further I get into their descrpition": Commune. It begins saying I can ask yes/no questions, then expands it to say "unclear" is an answer too, then seems to imply any one single word may be a legitimate answer while saying a legitimate answer can also be up to five words. The answers are correct, and yet somehow also the answers (a single word?) are structured to further the deity's interests.

BESW

> Spell description hazy; try again.

doppelgreener

@BESW It's like five different people were told an idea for a spell, and then contributed a sentence or two each, and they were just put together without examining whether they were each describing the same spell.

BESW

I figure commune is like getting a really harassed help desk operator. It's her job to give you good info, but she's not gonna waste any time explaining it and she might yank your chain a bit.

Magician

"Is light a particle or a wave?" "Unclear. Praise the sun."

2

doppelgreener

@Magician \o/

BESW

2:03 PM

(I've actually played that literally a few times, where the cleric gets in touch with his god's astral secretary.)

doppelgreener

@BESW Nice one.

BESW

"You've reached Pelor's beneficent insight, please state the nature of your conundrum. Uh huh. Kindly hold."

For more serious campaigns, I figure it's an I Ching sort of deal.

eimyr

@BESW I imagine celestial chorals as waiting music. "Your Communion is important to us and a representative will talk to you shortly. Please be advised that Pelor is all-powerful but not omnipresent."

BESW

Yup.

eimyr

@BESW "This call may be recorded for judgment and salvation purposes"

4

Magician

2:18 PM

"Are monks overpowered?" "Who gave you this prayer? Listen, I'm a busy celestial servitor. Stop prank communing me. Please. It's the third time today."

eimyr

@Magician "I'd like to escalate to a saint please."

Magician

@eimyr Pretty sure that's a higher-level spell.

eimyr

How much effort is 100XP in D&D terms? I.e. how many goblins must you slay to afford the 0700 call to your deity?

Magician

...I get an image of an exasperated cleric slamming goblins into an altar: "Damn thing's disconnected again. Anyone got a spare goblin? I just need a quarter."

eimyr

"I'm on hold again, give me another five, will you?"

Magician

2:23 PM

...and all the prayer booths are covered with sleazy Asmodeus posters on the inside.

eimyr

...and there is an abrupt and cynical jobsworth exorcist cleansing the booth after each prayer to keep the place ecumenical.

Anaphory

I think I may have a game this evening! :D

eimyr

YAY! I hope it's not about consulting deities.

doppelgreener

@Magician The "prayer booths" are probably small arenas with specially bred 100xp oxen in them to wrestle and defeat for the Commune payment. The wizards, of course, helped the clerics in experiments to study exactly the exact constraints around contacting a deity, and the Fezzik Practise Pointe Hypothesis is gaining traction in the community around a palpable measurement of abstract incorporeal stuff earned from slaying things that can then be spent on other things.

Anaphory

The plan is firefly. We'll see. I'll pack Great Ork Gods ;)

eimyr

2:30 PM

GOG is fantastic.

Who are the people? Random strangers?

Anaphory

To each other, maybe. One of the owners of the board games cafe, a student working in our department and someone I know from the Uni board games club.

Plus whoever passer-by may be in the cafe this evening and also wants to join.

@doppelgreener Fezzik? Is that a reference one could get?

@doppelgreener I assume prayers will then be measured in Oxen-power?

eimyr

@Anaphory kilo-what!s

Anaphory

2:47 PM

A “What! You again?” is probably arount 2 “Y/N” questions, which is one Oxen-Power, which is 100 Centi-Oxen or F (Practise Points). So a Kilo-What! is about one 200000 F, which is about the amount a saint or Epic Hero had to practise/slay/learn from birth onwards, right?

eimyr

Half that - it's 5th level spell, so for 100 centi-Oxen you get 5 Y/N questions, meaning a Kilo-What! is 100000 F.

doppelgreener

@Anaphory No reference intended; a wizardy-sounding name plus a character from The Princess Bride.

Anaphory

@doppelgreener That's what I got.

DForck42

3:01 PM

hello

Hi!

Yo

how's everyone?

@DForck42 Gʀᴇᴇᴛɪɴɢs ʜᴜᴍᴀɴ

pretty good :D

DForck42

lol

bards don't get much at lvl 7 do they? (5e)

nitsua60

3:20 PM

It's not clear to me anyone gets much at 7, off the top of my head. (Excepting, of course, your first L4 spell.)

DForck42

@nitsua60 oh yeah, I get a l4 spell

i did a cursory glance but didnt' find anything that immediately stuck out as "must have"

doppelgreener

@DForck42 considering spells effectively let you warp reality such that you can do things more effectively or even trivially compared to before, level 4 reality warping sounds pretty useful to get ASAP, and putting level 5+ reality warping one level closer also seems like a must-have.

DForck42

@doppelgreener lol

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 @Miniman i have a couple of thoughts on this question that i'd like to put toward people more knowledgeable on D&D 5e than I: i left a comment suggesting they should be asking about the two comparisons separately already, but i'm also wondering, is it already clear that they're similar or extremely different? in some circumstances like this we ask the asker to explain the nature of their confusion, would that be worthwhile?

because if they're extremely different, a question of whether/how there's a difference is a weird one. if they look and feel very similar though, like... i'm wondering what there is there to this question beyond "well, look at their features and their class descriptions, that's how they're different."

it's a weird-seeming question but that's based on stack and D&D intuition, not based on any knowledge of these classes and their places in D&D 5e.

nitsua60

3:37 PM

@doppelgreener Yeah, I'd already upvoted your comment to sever the two; my instinct is that any answer broad enough to cover both cases would be so shallow as to be useless.

I haven't sunk my teeth in yet and thought hard about what the answer to either would look like, though. (Getting at your "well, look at their features and descriptions..." spot-on comment above.)

DForck42

4:25 PM

so, in a combat-heavy campaign, which L4 Bard spell makes the monse sense to grab?

*most

spells that my bard use the most: vicious mockery, dissonant whispers, cure wounds

has access to: prestidigitation, thaumaturgy, mage hand, dispel magic, lightning arrow, burning hands, feign death

diego

4:44 PM

@DForck42 I feel like Confusion or Polymorph would be the best options, possibly Greater Invisibility. But my bard isn't high enough level to get those spells yet, so I don't have any practical experience with them.

DForck42

5:02 PM

@diego hmm...

Masakan

5:21 PM

oh hello anyone here?

doppelgreener

Nᴏʙᴏᴅʏ

Masakan

boooo

doppelgreener

Tᴜʀɴᴇᴛʜ ᴀᴡᴀʏᴇᴛʜ, ᴀʟʟ Yᴇ ᴡʜᴏᴍ ᴠᴀʟᴜᴇɴ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ Lʏꜰᴇ

Masakan

oh bite me.

doppelgreener

@Masakan Tʜɪs ᴍᴀʏᴇ ᴏᴄᴄᴜʀᴇ

doppelgreener

5:34 PM

on a more serious note, if you've got any questions or stuff to say, go right ahead and ask/say whatever it is

Masakan

Ok then....Is a hideaway hand crossbow overkill for wanting to conceal a weapon on your person?

nitsua60

6:16 PM

@DForck42 Confusion and polymorph are both solid choices: they can snipe an encounter in one round. Same save....

Masakan

@nitsua60 you still there?

doppelgreener

@Masakan what would make it overkill?

(which game and edition, if any?)

DForck42

bboop

Momonga-sama

Oh my god, I feel so terrible with Seven fixing nearly everyone of my posts with coma misuses ;-;.

DForck42

@Momonga-sama ...

Momonga-sama

6:31 PM

Hum?

DForck42

@Momonga-sama learn how to use commas...

Momonga-sama

The thing is I am not a native english speaker.

In my language commas are used very often.

doppelgreener

Commas are often tricky to learn in English especially for non-native speakers. They're a tool cued primarily to verbal patterns of idea separation, and even native speakers have trouble identifying which cues need commas.

DForck42

@Momonga-sama ahh

Masakan

6:55 PM

@doppelgreener 3.5 the one you know nothing about.
also putting hideaway on a light weapon that can already be concealed.

William Mariager

7:25 PM

Not exactly easy to see what that privilege is. :P

DForck42

@WilliamMariager lol

William Mariager

Should I post it on meta? Not sure if it's just me and some weird plugin messing it up.

Although all I have are adblockers/tracking prevention.

doppelgreener

@Masakan who said i know nothing about 3.5e..? i played in it for a while, i'm just not a system expert.

anyway i don't have races of the wild so i'll let someone else advise you on it specifically, but i'd suggest that if there's any reason at all to get hideaway weapon if you can already hide a light crossbow, you should look at what the benefit is and see whether the cost is worth it.

"overkill" depends on how badly you need that crossbow concealed, and how often you'll expect someone to go searching for a crossbow on your person.

DForck42

@doppelgreener a hideaway crossbow sounds like it'd be prone to exploding...

doppelgreener

7:40 PM

@DForck42 from what i can gather, hideaway lets you collapse a weapon down into a little palmable cylinder. presumably it wouldn't have much risk of eploding?

'cause if it's got any reasonable chance of exploding it's going to happen pretty soon.

DForck42

8:05 PM

@doppelgreener so, my logic is that crossbows work by storing energy in the bow, which is usually the most cumbersome part of a crossbow

if this energy were to be released due to a malfunction (which is a greater chance since this weapon now has to collapse), that energy will be released in unexpected ways and could cause the crossbow to explode

doppelgreener

@DForck42 while that is true, it is storing no energy while it is no longer tensed or, in this case, while it's folded up

(in real life part of storing a bow away often involves removing the bowstring entirely)

DForck42

@doppelgreener sorry, I didn't mean that it would explode while hidden, I meant it would be more likely to explode when being used

doppelgreener

oh right yes

[handwaves] it's magical probably

DForck42

@doppelgreener lol

LegendaryDude

8:49 PM

@WilliamMariager

Oops

@WilliamMariager rpg.stackexchange.com/help/privileges will tell you what privilege level you are at.

William Mariager

Oh yeah, I know. It's more the layout I was thinking. :) It's not exactly userfriendly.

LegendaryDude

It's always been that way IIRC, doesn't tell you what privilege, just that you got one

doppelgreener

@WilliamMariager that definitely looks like a bug. do post it to our meta, if this is the site you got it on.

William Mariager

@LegendaryDude If you take another look, you can see it actually tells you.

doppelgreener

i say our meta since it could be a bug particular to our site layout.

William Mariager

8:52 PM

But it underlines just how hard it is to see it. :P

LegendaryDude

Oh

I see

Looks like a funky CSS issue

William Mariager

Yeah, will do doppelgreener

LegendaryDude

Apparently I don't recall correctly :P

The Oracle

1

Q: Color Issues with "You earned a new privilege!"

As shown below, it's very difficult to see what the new privilege is.

bug profile-page user-interface

Miniman

9:32 PM

@DForck42 Hypnotic Pattern is probably the best crowd control around - certainly better than confusion.

nitsua60

9:47 PM

@Masakan Sorry for the delay--back now for an hour or so.

DForck42

@Miniman i'll give it a look!

nitsua60

(I dropped that line to DForck as I was leaving my office for classes then a rehearsal at the bell tower.)

@LegendaryDude you mean I should have turned one more page? Good point, editing now. Thanks =)

William Mariager

Nice edit @doppelgreener :P

nitsua60

@WilliamMariager @doppelgreener yes--never would have noticed the notice without your notice.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

10:29 PM

What if I fall in love with a user only knowing that said user writes perfect posts about things that I am interested at? :3

Miniman

@DForck42 Nvm, Bards don't get Hypnotic Pattern. Dammit, WotC! It's a spell that uses illusion to do enchatment! It literally combines the two Bard specialities.

doppelgreener

@Baskakov_Dmitriy If you have never met the user then you are probably not actually in love with them. Something is afoot. Check for possible charm spell glyphs embedded in their writing. (Like explosive runes, only less explosive.)

... What happens if someone puts Explosive Runes into a Stack Exchange post? Which things explode, if any?

2

Miniman

The screen that they read the runes on.

The server casts the explosive runes spell, obviously.

All the user does is use the markup that tells the server to use explosive runes.

doppelgreener

that would be hair-raising for an administrator to try to remove. (Once they finally hear about, and actually believe, all the monitors exploding, and manage to figure out what post is causing it without, themselves, being taken out by an exploding monitor.)

The Oracle

10:45 PM

0

Q: Flagging comments for deletion: flag one or all?

This may be a bit of a small issue but I was wondering if there's any guidance on whether one should flag all comments in a thread for deletion if they're no longer helpful (or never were to begin with) or only flag one in order to bring the thread to the mod's attention? The reason I ask is bec...

support comments

DForck42

@Miniman sadness

Miniman

Hence the quaint Faerunian tradition of reading through a telescope from 100ft.

DForck42

@Miniman could probably pick it up with magical secrets, maybe

Miniman

Certainly could, but competition for your Magical Secrets is pretty fierce.

DForck42

@doppelgreener we'd need explosive rune encoding

@Miniman true

I picked up lightning arrow and burning hands for my additional magical secrets

and have no regerts

Baskakov_Dmitriy

10:55 PM

@doppelgreener The spell is too targeted for an explosive rune...

And there are too many of those...

(Or I am just that particular person that gets his way all across the runes)

Anaphory

11:12 PM

Yay, I had a game tonight and it was fun enough to have another one next week :)

BESW

Woo!

Anaphory

Now I need to plan what to do with that group.

I mean, I should talk to the players to get a clearer picture of where they see things going. But then I need to make plans to keep things interesting.

Dodgy immoral corporate socialite, war veteran explosives engineer wage slave, defected mafia-corporation fighter pilot.

BESW

Anaphory

I doubt it. They were pretty determined (in particular the socialite) to distract a Fed safety inspector trying to Fight the Crimes of their patron corporation ;-)

doppelgreener

they fight... safety inspectors?

Anaphory

11:27 PM

The socialite isn't there next session, and the other two gave me a lot of interesting story hooks to play with. In particular the pilot was an excellent sport for giving me background connections to build upon.

BESW

@doppelgreener Perhaps they fight crime with crime.

Anaphory

@doppelgreener Not yet. They only tried to make her very comfortable and LOOK HERE DON'T LOOK THERE WHERE WE ARE MINING UNDER INHUMAN CONDITIONS I'M SURE YOU HAVE NO REASON TO LEAVE THIS FINE PARTY IN THIS FINE CORPORATE-SPONSORED HOTEL TO INSPECT OUR MINE SHAFTS.

But in the long run, yes.

He's a dodgy immoral corporate socialite, she's a war veteran explosives engineer wage slave, he's defected mafia-corporation fighter pilot. Together, THEY FIGHT safety inspectors and try to live a good, sorrow-free life.

BESW

"What's your motivating backstory?"
"A safety inspector killed my profit margins."

Anaphory

11:41 PM

Yep, I think that describes ℵ Inc. nicely.

SevenSidedDie

@Momonga-sama It's OK! Consider it a service and a (possibly not very useful) learning example. I'm learning Polish (slowly, badly), and the way Polish uses commas super throws me off — and I started knowing that every language punctuates differently. Anyone who can speak Polish gets mad respect from me, because damn, that is a challenging language for non-natives to learn. ;.;

The note I added was less about “hey, you're Englishing wrong!” and more “oh hey, I happen to understand why that mistake is so hard to correct, let me point it out to maybe help down the line”. Sadly, I can't say I actually understand the rules for comma usage between clauses in English enough to explain them; I just somehow know how to do it. (Maybe a good ELL Q in there…)

Transcript for